


sugarcane in the easy morning

by Summerlightning



Category: Adventure Time
Genre: F/F, Relationship Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-26
Updated: 2012-10-26
Packaged: 2017-11-17 02:42:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/546762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Summerlightning/pseuds/Summerlightning
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Their fingers twist together, a pretzel of biting nails and scrubbing skin and tendons gone too tight to turn much more.  Bubblegum’s arm is a lance of pain.  So’s the rest of her.  Marceline’s eyes are closed again and the room is harpsichord-polish bright, pewter everywhere shining spitsharp on the windowpanes.  Trainwreck, for real.  No survivors.</p>
            </blockquote>





	sugarcane in the easy morning

**Author's Note:**

> I've loved everything about you that hurts  
> So let me see your moves, let me see your moves
> 
> \-- Fall Out Boy, _G.I.N.A.S.F.S._

Morning:  a rheumy hairline thread on the horizon.  Somewhere birds are singing and dew freckles the courtyard such that one looking at it sideways would see a silver skin on it.  The footfalls of the servants patter-pitter-patter up the stairs and Bubblegum, already dressed, studies her reflection in the old oval mirror atop her bureau.  There is a wrinkle in the soft flesh beneath her right eye.  No small wonder, really.  Between the kerfuffle over the Nougat Marshes and the newest treaty imploring the Sugarsnap Peas to not declare war, please, they’ll only split into soup, she’s had no time to think about new lenses.  The right eye’s always been the weaker of the two anyway.  
  
Blowing a sigh out through her nose, she licks her thumb:  presses it to the mark and kneads until nothing’s there.  “Quick fix, but it’ll do,” she mutters.  Wiping her hand on the hem of her dress, she turns her head this way, that -- gives the tiniest of shrugs and picks up her tiara to fit it into place.  Peppermint Butler calls from the door.  She rises, goes to receive him.  His harried expression suggests there will be no time for breakfast today, let alone an appointment with the optometrist.  
  
Noon:  an embassy from a distant province arrives unexpectedly, upsetting the planned lunch banquet for a dignitary most unhappy to find attention taken from him.  Gloves are thrown, swords drawn.  Sharp sunlight sears yellow over the blades and Bubblegum runs between her dueling subjects with a shout of fury, her arms thrown out, her fingers splayed like anyone’s really going to look at them and stop.  No one does stop.  Bubblegum’s not tired of her job exactly, that’s not in her makeup and never will be, but she _is_ tired of its productions, its theatrics, and when the point of the dignitary’s sabre flays her from elbow to shoulder she screams a single word:  “NO!” and lunges down the blunt of the blade to slap its owner (with her other hand, of course).  Once across the left cheek -- her knuckles sweep back and strike his right, and it’s a good thing she’s never been one for rings.  Blood spatters the grass but it’s only hers.  
  
“Majesty,” the dignitary stammers.  Now he’s still.  His sabre drops to dig a channel in the grass.  The tablecloths brought out special for the banquet go _wtt-wtt_ as the wind pulls at them:  forks _tink_ against plates and everyone’s aghast, shocked into the temporary silence of the gawking.  Even Peppermint Butler stares, wringing a napkin between thoughtless hands.    
  
Bubblegum’s arm aches all fire and fudgesicles.  Drip-drip-drip from her elbow and the dress is ruined, of that there’s no doubt -- maybe the ligaments beneath it are too.  She straightens.  Needles of pain knife up through her shoulder, her collar and it hurts to swallow, but she does that and says, looking between the dignitary and the embassy’s president, “I’m so very disappointed in both of you.”  
  
“Majesty!”  This time the president speaks.  He takes a tentative step toward her, eyes eating up the wreck of her wound.  He sheathes his blade and Bubblegum’s vision takes on a gray wash that’s equal parts relief and shock.  If she tries to walk at this precise moment she won’t be able to, so she doesn’t try at all.  Limits are a good thing to know -- an even better thing to acknowledge.  The president warbles.  “Majesty, oh no, you’re hurt, oh _no_ \--”  
  
“I’ll mend.”  And she will.  Always.  “Are you two finished now?”  They nod like children chastised.  “Very good.  Sit here like the leaders you’re supposed to be and help yourselves to tea, then.  It’s fine.  I’ll go--”   _Clean up_ , she tries to say, _I’ll go clean up_ , but her gorge jumps into her throat and if she’d eaten breakfast she’d have it everywhere.  Given that she didn’t, her stomach lurches in a miserable dry jump and she coughs, turning her head aside.  She sways a hand midair -- pardon me, pardon me -- and drifts back to the palace.  Just inside the door the shakes take her wholeheartedly and she sits down hard and closes her eyes until the physician comes to tend her.  An hour later her arm is cocooned in bandages and swept up in a sling too, and she’s back outside for the banquet’s end.    
  
Evening:  purple dredges the sky.  War looms with it there, dark as thunderheads without the rumbling.  Bubblegum hosts the militant Sugarsnap guerillas in the palace atrium.  Armed only with slingshots, they pose little threat but annoyance to her or anyone else and they know it.  Therefore they accept her proposed treaty with minimal edits but lots of fuss to make up for it, and the hours whittle by and stars start up a flickery fairygleam in the windows.  Left alone late at last, the princess folds her face into her good hand -- the other doesn’t so much hurt anymore as it itches -- and rubs slow circles over her temples.  
  
Night.  It’s night.  
  
The palace has wound its gears down soft around her.  The lights are low, the rooms filled up with the awkward echoes of almost-quiet.  Faithful enough, Peppermint Butler lingers at the door.  He asks her what she’d like for dinner.  In turn she asks him what time it is.  
  
“Oh!”  He fumbles a pocketwatch.  “It’s nearly two hours ‘til midnight, majesty.  But--”  
  
No, but nothing.  “Go to bed and tell the kitchen staff to do the same,” she says.  She suffocates partway on a yawn.  “I am too.”  She’s had enough of the day, no question, no answer.  Her expression must say as much because the butler departs in immediate obedience.  Normally he’d fight her about a missed meal, let alone all three together.  Bless him for small favors.  
  
Oh, she’s tired.  
  
She climbs the stairs, lets herself into her bedroom:  struggles with getting her dress off around the sling and finally just lets the arm down out of it.  There’s a warning twinge yet no real pain.  She strips.  Holding the marshmallow-bandaged mess of her limb outside the shower curtain next proves to be a real trick, and she gets it sopping anyway when she drops the soap and forgets herself, reaching after it with both hands.  
  
A few minutes later she’s relatively dry and in her pajamas, the shirt inside-out and she’s too far-gone fatigued to try fixing it.  She settles on her bed, groans:  abandons all pretenses of poise and dignity and flops backward, spread-eagled across the mattress.  A throb kindles in her torn elbow.  The maddening desire to scratch at it is only bested by the sudden shroud of exhaustion noosed tight about her.  Bubblegum takes up observance of the backs of her eyelids.  She is a revenant.  She is devout.  She drifts.  
  
“You’re snoring,” says a voice eventually.  “Sheesh.  I’ve never heard you snore.”  
  
Bubblegum jolts back to wakefulness.  She flails doing this, and her arm burns with a line of razorbarb fire -- she sunfishes, yelps, wheels onto her side on the sheets and curls into herself, hissing.  Laughing a little, Marceline leans over her.  The sound isn’t so much malicious as it is honest.  It says _you look like chewed-up, spat-out licorice_.  Bubblegum turns her face partially into a pillow that happens to be nearby and moans, “Oh my glob, not _you_.”  
  
It’s late.  It must be.  One big moonshadow stretches its shawl across her bedroom through the open window.  The curtains there are doing that dramatic billowy thing most often seen in movies, Marceline a silhouette against them.  Her laughter dies mid-chortle.  Chokes, more like.  She sweeps backward.  Her feet kick out, all red shoes and flapping undone laces.  Bubblegum feels the first stab of guilt deep down, but before it can manifest as more Marceline’s already straddling the sill again, inches from heaving herself back into the night she came from.  
  
“Yes, me.”  If Bubblegum was expecting a snarl she doesn’t get one:  the words are more the whispery sort, oilslick hurt and slippery harm.  Marceline turns away.  Half her face is white in the moonlight, her mouth a bramble twisting down, her fangs the thorns of it.  “So fudging sorry, I’ll just--”  
  
“No!”  Bubblegum sits up.  Her spine cracks a hello.  “No, that was rude.”  Terribly so.   _Awfully_ so.  Oh, but she’s still so tired.  “It’s too late for my manners mechanism to function, Marceline -- and why, ouch.”  Her bandages have bled through, she thinks, but she checks them and realizes they’re just residually wet from the soap-shower incident.  Under the press of her fingers they’re pulpy and gross.  “Why are you here?  Grod’s sake, what time is it even?”  
  
Marceline wavers on the sill, rocking back on her heels.  They squeak.  She grimaces.  It’s only been forever since they’ve shared space in a room, let alone _this_ particular room, and they both know it and it hurts.  There is a miserable but blessedly meager slant of silence.  Then Marceline says, “Well, I heard you got sword-sliced or some junk.  That’s all.”  She doesn’t answer the other question.  Why should she know anyway?  She’s never worn a watch that Bubblegum can remember.  Time’s not important to someone who already has it all and can’t spend a lick of it, or so Marceline told her once.  It was the biggest buttblister of a lie ever.    
  
“A scratch,” says Bubblegum, heavily.  She skims off the sopping bandages.  The patch of gauze beneath is pink and a little wet, but the tape holds and she leaves it.  A shadow nips over the bed:  Marceline, bending in to see.  
  
“Big scratch.”  Behind that, silent:   _You okay?_  
  
A shrug is all Bubblegum is able to manage.  (Her day’s second.)  Abruptly, inexplicably, she wants to cry.  Marceline’s hovering close and smells like sundown, like wet meadows and darkness and faint winter starlight specked across the bowl of the sky.  Cold.  Fresh.  Familiar, if not distantly so.  It hurts.  It hurts.  It hurts Bubblegum and she doesn’t have any right, maybe, to feel bad enough about it to shed the stupid tears welling up.  She’s the one who caused it in the first place, isn’t she?  She’s the one who sent Marceline away for good what seems like so long ago, and it was sunny outside then.  There was a trail of steam.  She remembers it.  It didn’t smell like Marceline does now.  It smelled like ashes, dead and done.  
  
“I’m fine,” she says.  
  
Another silence.  It has the potential to be as miserable as the first until Marceline ends it before it can really begin -- she folds herself down slow, legs stretching out, and balances on the edge of the mattress.  She’s almost sitting.  Absurdly long and lithely gray, her toes plunge into the floor’s plush carpet.  Her hair hangs in a lean sleek lank behind her and she braces herself on the flats of her hands.  She’s near enough to touch.  She _does_ touch Bubblegum, whether she means to or not.  Her fingers brush an ankle.  The princess thinks to twitch away and doesn’t because--  
  
Because she’s tired.  Or so she’ll say if anyone asks.  
  
“You don’t look fine,” Marceline says and she’s treading careful, ginger and creeping.  There’s concern and caution in her voice where usually a bitter bite lingers instead.  It’s so strange to hear that Bubblegum blinks, tries not to stare.  “You look awful.”  
  
It’s out too late for Bubblegum to stop it:  “Please, whisper for me more sweet nothings.”  Their banter was always easy.  That it can still be so is a startling comfort to Bubblegum, a shot of warmth where she never knew she was cold.  
  
Marceline smiles.  (An indulgent, okay-I’ll-give-it-to-you smile.)  She leans back farther -- the bed squeaks and her hair trickles over Bubblegum’s feet.  
  
“You look, what?  Huh.”  She considers, or pretends to.  “Crudtastic, I think.  You look like a plopberry sundae with a scumcherry on top.  You look--”  Her hand rises.  She brushes the thumb of it beneath Bubblegum’s eye where the wrinkle was in the morning -- where it probably is again.  They never really go away, not for long.  Her smile flickers.  “You look--”  
  
It hurts.  It hurts.  It’s awkward.  Sluice-juice awkward.  Bubblegum tries, “Like a half-melted popsicle?” and Marceline says, “You only wish you were that slick,” and they’re both smiling then, and oh it hurts hurts _hurts_ but somehow it also--  
  
Marceline presses her hand entire to Bubblegum’s cheek:  slides her fingers back into the pink pliant hair behind an ear and plucks free the princess’s tiara.  It was digging lopsided into Bubblegum’s forehead, not that she’d noticed.  There’s probably a mark left behind to match.  If there is Marceline doesn’t tease her about it.  She only rolls the circlet in her pale, slender palms and flicks it clink-clink-clinking onto the bureau, and says, “There.  Now you look better.  Barely.”  
  
What else is there to say?  Bubblegum provides a, “Thank you,” too small to fill up the forced formality of the space between them.  
  
Marceline’s face changes.  It goes hard, stone-hard:  creases, cracks, crumbles, softens again.  She sighs, “Dang, Bonni,” long through her teeth, and reaches for something on the windowsill.  It’s a little paper bag with the top rolled up into a curl, spotted with circles of grease -- the smell coming from it is ten times better than lovely and Bubblegum’s stomach snarls for it, tangling itself in knots.  
  
Her tongue feels heavy.  She moves it around in her mouth, traces the backs of her teeth:  gulps down the wet and asks, “What--”  
  
Marceline dumps the bag in her lap.  It’s hot.  “Dang,” she repeats, “come on, it’s dinner.  I know you didn’t eat any.  I can still tell the days when you don’t.”  She sounds offended Bubblegum might think otherwise.  “I can tell half a kingdom away.  Dig in.  It’s fresh.”  
  
The princess plucks open the bag.  Inside she finds a glistening frond of deep-fried majesty, golden-brown, crisped:  a corndog and a capped cup of mustard, even.  There’s not a napkin in sight.  (Just the way Grod intended.)  The sizzle-scent of grease is incredible.  Bubblegum is so tired and then she isn’t, like a switch inside her brain just goes _fwip_.  She takes up the gift by its stick and sinks her teeth into it; her stomach clenches, pitches, settles and turns belly-up to beg.  She eats, and only dabs the corndog in the mustard too because Marceline opens the cup and holds it out for her.  It’s magical.  It’s a balm.  It crackles in her teeth.  
  
“Slow down or you’ll hurl.”  Marceline’s laughing.  It’s not her bedclothes subject to the splatter zone -- why shouldn’t she?  “I brought onion rings too.”  
  
“I will _not_ hurl.  Please, I have more class.  Did you really?”  Licking her fingers, Bubblegum puts on a plaintive face.  “Hand them over, then.”  
  
Marceline produces a second paper bag from the shadows at the sill.  “As you command, princess.”  
  
More eating.  Bubblegum does start to feel marginally nauseous after the eighth onion ring she crams down her craw.  She takes a couple quick breaths, massages her ribs -- tucks everything back into its yellowed wax wrapping and leans forward to wipe her hands on Marceline’s jeans.  
  
“Hey!  I just washed these!”  Not that she flinches away even a fraction.  Bubblegum adds her fingerprints to the denim:  Marceline’s a liar and hasn’t washed them in probably a week at least, and they’re old anyway.  The blue’s burnished black in places.  
  
Once her fingers are clean as they’ll get with no real washing, Bubblegum leaves her hands where they are.  Just -- just leaves them, lets them rest scooped and shallow at Marceline’s knee.  She doesn’t look up.  Doesn’t say anything.  Another _thank you_ wouldn’t be so much remiss as it would be too small to serve a purpose here.  At length Marceline curls her own hand crossways over both of Bubblegum’s -- tap-taps the crumb-flecked flesh with her smallest finger and smirks, half shy, half shamed.  
  
“Can we talk?” she asks.  “I didn’t come to do that” -- she hurries to say it -- “the corndog wasn’t a _bribe_ \--”  
  
“How about the onion rings?”  Bubblegum can’t resist.  “Were those a bribe?”  
  
“Okay, well.  Maybe.”  But the real answer:  no.  “Seriously.  I just came to -- to come, Bonni.  I wasn’t even really that worried.”  And nah, probably she wasn’t.  “You can handle yourself, I know.  I’ve watched you do it.  It, this -- it was just an excuse to see you.  And there was a corndog stand on the way and I thought... you know what I thought.”  
  
Bubblegum does.  She does know.  An agitated lavender is creeping up the well of Marceline’s throat.  The two pinprick marks there that gave her the last millennium are ringed white in the flush, like weals.  “Uh-huh,” Bubblegum says, “um.  Yeah.  What did you wanna talk about?”  
  
Marceline motions, haphazard, helpless.  “About this.  About how here I am and here you are, and how you’re not pushing me out the window and we’re not hating on each other all awful the way we used to, not even the way we _usually_ do, and it kinda feels like...”  
  
She leaves off it:  glances up and looks at Bubblegum, and there’s agony and longing and wretched, wondering hope written plain as differential equations over her face.  Bubblegum offers, not unkindly, “It kinda feels like maybe it’s two o’clock in the morning, Marceline.”  
  
The vampire squeezes her eyes shut.  Her mouth slackens like a fist’s been rammed into it and she’s reeling, but she tightens it up next and agrees, “Yeah, okay, and you’re saying two o’clock in the morning is the reason it kinda feels like maybe you want me here?”  
  
Bubblegum stares.  Marceline holds her gaze, all horrible kinds of intent, and goes on, “You weren’t happy to see me.  Maybe you’re still not and I’m sorry for flying in uninvited, that was creepy, that was wrong.  I can go.  No!  You know what?  I _will_ go.”  And she rises.  Whether it’s a test she’s running or a point she’s trying to prove or a sincere intention or some abominative amalgamation of all three, she pops up to float a few inches above the mattress, and she’s drifting toward the window and Bubblegum scrabbles after her, reaching for her with both hands the same way she sought the soap earlier.  Her elbow screams.  The tape pulls.  She catches a shoelace.  
  
“No,” the princess says with tired firmness, “no, I want you here, I do.  Did.  You’re right.”  Marceline stops.  “But I pretty much always do” -- and this is something Bubblegum manages without shame or stumbling -- “always!  I want you here every day, Marceline, you were my best friend above and before anything else, I want you here every _hour_ , and two o’clock in the morning is no exception save that it’s maybe the only time I believe I can actually let myself see you without feeling like I’m doing my kingdom the disservice of inattention, having been thoroughly distracted by every aspect of you.  Now,” and she takes a breath and tugs the shoelace.  The shoe slides down Marceline’s foot.  The vampire’s not wearing socks.  Ugh, the _heathen_.  “Now tell me you want to stay, Marceline, having heard that cruelty.  Really.  Tell me you want to.  You didn’t last time.  You left.  You were angry.  Aren’t you still?”  
  
“Of course I’m angry!”  Marceline kicks the foot Bubblegum’s not got leashed.  Carefully.  Away from everything else.  The white hightop camera-flashes in the moonlight.  “You chose your kingdom over being with me before and you’re still clinging to that stupid edict like a lifesaver -- no, not the candy kind.  Good glob.”  She turns midair, lips drawn back.  “And,” she says, “you know what’s worse?  I have to rely on coincidence just to see you.  Well, coincidence or I have to fly over here with a disgusting deep-fried past-midnight snack--”  
  
“Thank you for that, by the way.”  It’s not too small to say this time.  
  
“--sure.”  Scrubbing a hand up her face, the vampire flails.  “Yeah.  Yeah, I’m angry.  You’re a jerk.  You’re _mean_.  You’re too responsible and you think I’m a horrible, corruptive influence--”  
  
“Sometimes.”  It’s a keystone point.  
  
Marceline agonizes.  “--oh, most of the time!  Give me the credit, it’s all I’ve got!”  She gnashes her fangs.  It’s the most adorable kind of hissy fit.  Bubblegum wants to laugh and diplomatically does not.  
  
“Fine.  Granted.”  
  
Steamrolling ahead, Marceline groans, “--you think I’m a horrible, corruptive influence _most of the time_ and our relationship’s not what it was because you said _duty over love_ and I walked out, too lumping proud to fight about it.  But no matter how angry I am about all of that I still miss you.  You were my best friend too.”  
  
With startling immediacy she flumps from floating down onto the bed, narrowly missing Bubblegum’s feet.  She sprawls out her arms.  Her hair falls hooked into her face and Bubblegum, nudging nearer, is inspired to tuck it back up above Marceline’s brow where it belongs.  
  
“We’re a wreck,” the princess says, “a huge one.   _Train_ wreck.”  Why it sounds cheerful when it’s coming through broken glass inside her she doesn’t know, and she’s very, very smart, so altogether it’s a fairly unique kind of situation.  She adds, “I miss you too.”  
  
“I got that impression.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
Bubblegum folds up her legs and scoots the last bit to Marceline.  She considers, caves:  cards her fingers through the vampire’s dark hair, scattering remnant honey-colored crumbs and smearing grease.  At least Marceline doesn’t appear to mind the mess.  She rolls her head to the touch, ruby slits visible under hooded eyelids -- huffs out grumbling, wordless under-breath mutters.  Speaking of eyelids, hers look puffy and shiny-taut.  Maybe she cried recently.  Maybe she just wants to now and these are the signs of that soon-to-be storm.  
  
Marceline ventures, “I’m fifteen different kinds of pathetic if I’m sort of willing to take just two o’clock in the morning, aren’t I?”  
  
Bubblegum’s fingers snag on a tangle.  The painful lunge in her chest gives her pause regardless.  “What?”  
  
Some strange celestial force has Marceline hide her face in Bubblegum’s knee.  What's she so afraid of?  “You said -- you said two o’clock in the morning was the only time you...”  Well, Bubblegum knows what she said, and Marceline certainly does.  “That’s how it’s gotta work, huh, if it’s gonna work at all?  You don’t feel so compelled to be a princess after everyone’s gone to bed, right, when the kingdom’s all hush-hush quiet?”  The vampire tries to sneer.  Tries to sound hardcore.  Both efforts wobble and Bubblegum thinks of one locomotive smashing headlong into another, slam-bang-explosion-pyrotechnic show.  “Two o’clock in the morning and you don’t feel too responsible to give a vampire queen a go?”  It’s awful, but-- “Okay.  What if I said okay to that?” asks Marceline.    
  
Numbly Bubblegum interjects, “I think--”  
  
“You asked if I’m still mad.”  Marceline’s working herself up, chest tight, words rolling around in it like snare-ripples in a drum.  “I told you I am.  I mean it!  Bonni, you’re _such_ a jerk!”  This is nearly a sob, muffled by way of patella.  “You can want to see me every day, every hour -- fine.  Sounds pretty.  Sounds nice.  Pure poetry.  I’d like fries with that.”  
  
Bubblegum flounders.  It’s unpleasant:  she’s not used to not knowing what to do, not used to being in the place where the hand isn’t hers or the upper one, but then again it’s always been that way with Marceline.  It’s part of the reason they found each other, frittered away evenings:  part of the reason they fell together, one piece of a puzzle to another.  It’s part of the reason they fell apart.  “It sounds like you’re angry enough to go, then, to leave,” she says, and it’s not a threat or a suggestion but Marceline’s fury ebbs away the same way darkness runs from a sunrise, little purple flickers draining down to nothing.  The red roiling in her eyes boils flat, boils burgundy.  She takes Bubblegum’s hand, pulls it out of her hair:  presses the palm of it to her mouth and kisses it, cold, where Bubblegum’s thumb starts the webbing toward her forefinger.  
  
“I don’t want to see you that much,” Marceline says.  It comes out a confession.  “Not every day.  Not every hour.  Keep your poetry.  I _am_ still mad and you might want it, might want me, I believe you -- you might want to see me all the time but you’re too stuck in your station to show anyone.  To show me.  And look.”  She gives the hand she’s holding a squeeze and it’s a reprimand worse than a sabre to the elbow.  “Look at this crud, Bonni.  I had to come to you.”  
  
A sick heat blurs behind Bubblegum’s eyes.  Now _she’s_ angry.  Tired-angry, hot-angry, bottled up and bubbling.  Trust Marceline to twist the cap.  Oh, they fell apart.   _Apart_ and here’s why.  “You’re talking like I never made an effort to see you!” the princess fumes.  “Like I never came to your house to try to apologize, like you’re the only one who ever brought food stupid-late.  They were cupcakes, Marceline, _okay_ , red velvet with blasphemous strawberry buttercream frosting and I made them myself and you, _you_ don’t get to be the only one here who was _wronged_.”  She’s too royal to stop.  She shakes a finger, stern, and hates herself for it.  “You don’t get to act like I didn’t track you for months when you wandered away!”  And Marceline can wander so, so far.  Has before, past the ridges of realms long beyond decent.  Bubblegum gulps down ire.  Her composure’s a wet flapping flag threatening to unravel:  how _embarrassing_.  How familiar, how acquainted, how _this is home on your heart_ cross-stitch _horrible_.    
  
“It’s hard, you know,” she says, “it’s really, really hard for me to make myself go to you when all you do is belittle everything I’m about.  When you laugh at me, _mock_ me, call me pet names you don’t mean anymore in front of our friends like they’re old jokes, like you didn’t invent them yourself first out of _affection_ \--”  
  
Their fingers twist together, a pretzel of biting nails and scrubbing skin and tendons gone too tight to turn much more.  Bubblegum’s arm is a lance of pain.  So’s the rest of her.  Marceline’s eyes are closed again and the room is harpsichord-polish bright, pewter everywhere shining spitsharp on the windowpanes.  Trainwreck, for real.  No survivors.  
  
From amidst the wreckage Marceline says, “You’re mad too,” as though she’s surprised, only not.  
  
“Uh-huh.”  They’re playing thumb war, absently.  Neither of them will ever win.  Bubblegum’s stronger than she looks for all she’s got stubby little digits and the spindle of Marceline’s grip won’t prick her, refuses to.  They fell together, once.  Here’s why -- here’s why.  “I’m mad too.”  
  
Now they should probably be quiet.  They should probably lapse into contemplation, holding one another’s hands -- they should probably reminisce about what they had once and talk it over and determine it deceased.  They’re old, both of them, old enough to handle things with maturity, but.   _But_.  It’s hard, Bubblegum said, and it is.  It’s really, really hard, and the reverberations of their ruined relationship wash over them, not finished, not finished.  They were best friends.  Splintered, shaken apart, stranded lightyears from compromise -- no matter.  They still are.  
  
“I--”  Marceline licks her lips.  “I had a bad day today too, okay, I didn’t get my arm slashed open but my heart went through a meatgrinder and maybe, Bonni, maybe two o’clock in the morning’s good enough for now, what do you think?”  Her teeth gleam.  She’s not smiling, not quite.  “I feel better a little, seeing you.  Do you -- seeing me, do _you_ \--”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
The bed dips.  One of them moves, then they both do, maybe not at the same time but close enough.  Bubblegum rolls onto her knees -- slides one leg over Marceline’s waist and settles flush against her, hips to hips.  Beneath her Marceline bucks up and they meet midway, elbows and chins and mouths mushed together.  Marceline bites, just once:  Bubblegum snaps back harder, teeth to neck, and Marceline says, “Hah!  Ow!  Ow -- ow, wow-wow, yikes,” as one of her hands flutters to feather in the small of Bubblegum’s back.  She holds herself against the princess.  Bubblegum stops.  
  
“This is really stupid,” she says.  A tiny part of her is horrified.  The greater part of her is decidedly not, deliriously delighted and lit up snow-candle white inside.  Marceline’s jeans rasp at her thighs through her thin pajamas and the vampire’s belt buckle brands her belly, the ring of metal cold.  “Marcy, oh, this is really stupid, isn’t it?”  
  
Marceline drags a pillow behind herself:  wedges it there so she can sit up better.  Meanwhile, her hand is rucking high the fabric of Bubblegum’s nightshirt, pulling it -- her nails scrape skin and she nods, eartips blue in the ink-dark swoop of her hair.  “Yeah.  Yeah it’s stupid, we’re bad people, bad friends” -- _best friends_ \-- “and we can quit this, we can.”  She’s already tired of teasing.  She fists a handful of Bubblegum’s shirt, wrenches it, worries her lip between her teeth and says, “Right now.  If we’re gonna, we should quit this right now.”  
  
They blink at each other.  Next Bubblegum lifts her arms, lifts them up despite the sting, and Marceline pulls away the shirt and throws it somewhere else.  She skirts her fingers slow down the princess’s bare collar, then, walks them one-two lower and lower -- cups a breast like she’s shy about it and thumbs the nipple, grazing her nail over it the same time Bubblegum’s hands find her zipper and flip the catch free.  
  
Marceline laughs:  pinches, a thing that could hurt and does, just a little.  She’s still mad.  She didn’t lie.  “What’re you gonna do with that, princess, you’re sitting right on top of me, you’re sugarbutt heavy and you smell like corndogs--”  
  
“Shut up.”  Bubblegum slides back enough to get a hand between them -- enough to get it past the zipper and into Marceline’s jeans and finally just into Marceline, two fingers tight and turned up.  Marceline’s laugh cuts to a whine-whimper-snarl and she squirms, shivers, arches and well, Bubblegum’s still mad too.  The princess says, “Shut up, please, shut up shut _up_ I’m sorry, you’re sorry, we’re both sorry, please let’s just--”  
  
They kiss.  Out of practice.  Off-center.  It’s not an apology and it’s not a compromise and nothing’s fixed, but it feels good for feeling good’s sake and for now, at least, that’s better than either of them can do alone.  Bubblegum delves her fingers deeper, gentle where she wasn’t before and Marceline hiccups, “Oh, oh -- hah, a-ahaha, _ah_ , yeah, you -- you _taste_ like corndogs, gross--”  
  
Morning:  late and bruised and dark and slipping by, they spill into each other.  They cling.


End file.
